ABOVE: A rare WWII-era colour photo of Festival
Hall in its original incarnation as Brisbane Stadium
BELOW: Brisbane Festival Hall, photographed on the day of its closure in 2003.
(Photos courtesy of Peter Dunn's
Australia At War website)

NOTES

Festival Hall was originally known as the Brisbane Stadium. It was built in 1910 by
boxing champion and promoter Reginald "Snowy" Baker and his brother Harald. The Bakers
had been partners with the builder of the original Sydney
Stadium, boxing promoter Hugh D. Macintosh. They bought out Macintosh in 1912 and
built more stadiums in other capitals. In 1914 the Bakers joined forces with
Richard Lean and prominent Melbourne business identity John Wren, becoming the
principal shareholders in a new company that controlled the venues, Stadiums Pty Ltd
(usually referred to as Stadiums Ltd).

Wren is a legendary figure in 20th century Australian history. He made millions from
illegal SP bookmaking and racing and is said to have been a close associate of notorious
Melbourne gangster Squizzy Taylor. His wealth and influence also made him a key figure in the
Victorian ALP in the 1930s. Shortly after his death in the late 1940s, he achieved nationwide
notoriety when it was alleged that Wren was the real-life subject of Frank
Hardy's controversial 1950 novel Power Without Glory. Hardy's book describes the rise
to wealth and power of its anti-hero, John West. The book not surprisingly
outraged the Wren family, who claimed that the West character was a thinly veiled portrait of Wren,
and it became the subject of one of Australia's most famous libel case (which Hardy won).
The Wren family are believed to still have an interest in Stadiums Ltd today.

As the 1940s photo (top) shows, the original Brisbane Stadium was a brick-and-corrugated-iron
building, very similar in style to Sydney Stadium. Sydney Stadium was demolished in 1971 to make
way for the Eastern Suburbs Railway, but the Brisbane Stadium was extensively renovated in the
late '50s, as part of the celebrations for the centenary of Queensland's statehood and it reopened
as Festival Hall on 27 April 1959.

Like its sister venues in other cities, Festival Hall had been originally been built as a
boxing stadium, but as the popularity of boxing and wrestling waned after the introduction
of television, it began to be used more often for other forms of entertainment, including
the imported American sports craze "Roller Derby", and as a venue for concerts and
theatrical presentations.

Brisbane Festival Hall was the city's primary indoor venue for more than forty years and
hosted the Brisbane performances for virtually every major tour by visiting overseas artists,
until the venue's closure in August 2003. As well as overseas tours (of which the list below
represents a small sample), Festival Hall was a regular venue for Australian acts, and literally
hundreds of Aussie acts performed there.

Brisbane Festival Hall closed on 29 August 2003, and the building was subsequently sold and
demolished to make way for an apartment development. The final concert held there, Michael Franti &
Spearhead, took place on 9 August 2003. The seats from the venue were sold off as souvenirs in
lots of three.

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